Let me preface this article by first saying that I am not anti-Community Lifestyle Commitment (CLC). On the contrary, there are many things I appreciate about it. For example, I love that I can walk around campus and through dorm buildings without needing to navigate around teeming masses of drunk students nor have to bury my head in pillows in order to drown out next-door parties.

This being said, however, I despise the way Res. Life carries out their disciplinary actions.

It was once explained to me that the lifestyle agreement was an “invitation” to join EMU’s student community and that it was merely a way to keep students accountable to each other’s wellbeing; however, after personally experiencing ramifications of violating this “invitation,” I can whole heartedly say that this statement is false.

My junior year, my apartment was reported for possession of alcohol and marijuana. Res. Life came in, and we admitted to the alcohol and marijuana. However, it was later discovered that one of my roommates was cooking substances in my suite over break while my other roommate and I were home.

I was told that I was not allowed on campus for five days, not given a chance to talk or explain the situation to my peers, nor a chance to try to fix things with any uncomfortable party involved.

Following my five day suspension and the expulsion and arrest of my roommate; I returned to campus feeling like an outcast. In my absence, rumors had begun to circulate around campus, ranging from swords and guns to prostitution rings to swat teams with helicopters.

Res. Life’s solution for my displacement was calling a hall meeting and having me generically apologize to everyone for “violating the community agreement,” paying a fine, and being bullied by Res. Life into re-signing the CLC so that I might once again return to the community that shamed and abandoned me when I needed them most.

I was never asked, “What do you need in order to feel like you are still a part of this community?” I was just handed a fine and told I should consider myself lucky it wasn’t worse.

The true spirit and strength of a community is tested by how the community reacts to the failures of those within their community, and a truly healthy and functioning community requires us to not only acknowledge a person’s struggle but to also respond in a mutually beneficial manner, not to shame and threaten them.

The CLC, despite the initial intentions, isn’t about keeping students accountable to needs of one another, it’s keeping us accountable to a one-size fits-all penal system. It isn’t an invitation: it’s a gavel.

EMU is founded on a long-standing religious tradition, one that has had a poor relationship with alcohol in the last hundred years, so to today’s Mennonites, accepting alcohol back into the community seems like a move away from, and even against, that core and founding tradition. But I would argue that the founding tradition of the Mennonite faith is, ironically, the act of straying from tradition.

The Anabaptist movement was a radical stance against the tradition of baptism at birth, and, as any conscientious objector will tell you, choosing not to participate in military combat is just as radical and just as unpopular. The Mennonites have been standing up for their lifestyle for a long time.

Allow me to continue the tradition of our respected ancestors and take a stand for the Mennonite lifestyle of today by proposing that alcohol be allowed on the campus of this university.

Many Mennonites grew up with an understanding that alcohol is synonymous with gluttony and laziness, two of the seven sins that work in opposition to the Mennonite values of moderation, hard work, and achievement. While alcohol can lead to both laziness and gluttony, these are only part of the truth about alcohol.

Like so many things in life, there are healthy approaches and there are unhealthy approaches. When alcohol is used responsibly it can be a wonderful social lubricant, easing up tensions and insecurities and bringing people together over a shared experience. In other words, alcohol can help create community, which is no easy task — as anyone, myself included as a previous Northlawn CA, will tell you.

It is also equally as true that alcohol is capable of disrupting community. Take for example my extended family. We love each other very much, and my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles have done a great job of modeling community for me my whole life. But one of my aunts is alcoholic, and family gatherings are always tainted by the constant worry about where my aunt is, what she is doing, if she is planning on driving home, or how many jobs she has lost this year because she showed up to work with booze on her breath. Alcohol can be destructive not only to individuals who fail to use it respon- sibly, but also to the people who care about them.

The other way in which alcohol can be destructive is by making loved ones who choose not to use alcohol uncomfortable. Because of my aunt’s alcohol problem my mom abstains from drinking, something I didn’t notice until I turned 21 and my dad bought me a beer for the first time. My mom ordered water, and from the moment the beer arrived at the table, there was a palpable tension. At the time I was unsure why, but Mom was upset. She was thrown by my casual entrance into the world of alcohol and scared that the milk stout I wanted so badly to enjoy was threatening to disrupt our family all over again.

These kinds of stories are important for us to acknowledge, but on a campus where alcohol is not even a possibility, it is incredibly difficult to talk about experiences with alcohol, both negative and positive. There is a culture of fear on our campus, fear that one might be targeted and searched, suspended from school, or made to sit through a “restorative process” that forces students to deny their own feelings and forgo their own perspectives in order to “restore” their relationship with Residence Life.

Being reintegrated into the community means admitting you were wrong. But is there anything inherently wrong with alcohol in and of itself? Shouldn’t students be confronted about destructive behavior rather than mere possession?

The current reality is that students do purchase and consume alcohol, and consumption occurs on campus. Students need an environment where they can talk about alcohol so that they can hold each other accountable to responsible consumption and develop healthy drinking habits. I would like to see EMU become a place where these kinds of conversations are encouraged.

This university aims to nurture the growth of young adults, to create global leaders to serve in a global context. Global context means within the Mennonite community and outside of it, and outside of the Mennonite community, people are drinking alcohol.

With no prior exposure and no preached or practiced drinking culture to base their behavior on, students may find themselves in dangerous situations because all it takes is one time being a little too out of control to end up in a bad situation.

What I am proposing is that of- age students who live in upperclassmen campus housing – Hillside and Parkwoods – be permitted to have alcohol in their places of residence. If we allow students to be honest about their lifestyles, we can engage in a real conversation on campus about what healthy drinking looks like, model healthy drinking for younger students, and get to the students who truly do need help faster.

Let’s not perpetuate the culture of silence. Let’s have a healthy conversation about how to enjoy alcohol.

Why are EMU’s alcohol policies structured as they are? What is the intent of a dry campus? What is the range of Residence Life responses to various infractions of the student handbook? I interviewed Associate Dean of Students, Eric Codding, for first-hand answers to these questions and more.

Excepting the new no-hosting initiative, EMU’s alcohol policies predate Codding. He commented that at one time they expected all of their students not to drink, but later they aligned their policies with the state expectation of 21 and over.”

The no-hosting policy, as Codding explained, is meant to discourage students from “creating a space where . . . other students are encouraged to misuse alcohol.” He explained that it is “a different level” when a student goes beyond drinking alone or with a roommate to inviting others to partake.

Off campus, students’ behavior “can appropriately come under the concern of the broader college community,” said Codding. “Having said that, we, in Residence Life often talk about a desire to work responsibly with the things we become aware of. And so, we’re not attempting to police anything.” Incidents that could come to their attention include drinking on campus, regardless of age; drinking off campus while underage; and drinking on or off campus to the point of intoxication. Often, Codding said, concerned friends are the ones talking to Residence Life about alcohol use.

On an anonymous survey of incoming first-years, about 60 percent agreed to follow the CLC because they already lived their lives accordingly, and about 30 percent agreed to follow it specifically in the context of attending EMU. Only about 9 percent of the over 200 responses indicated they did not necessarily intend to follow the CLC.

While the dream of a unanimously upheld CLC remains unrealized, however, Residence Life is in the challenging position of being held accountable to the university to respond to students who violate the policy.

“The problem is foreseeing when there might be clear victims,” said Codding. “Once substances are misused, particularly when they’re misused and it leads to intoxication, then the ability to protect one another can be greatly diminished.”

The severity of misuse and damage caused are taken into account with how Residence Life will respond. In the most rare and severe circumstances of evaluated harm, a student may be dismissed – in technical terms, receiving an indefinite suspension.

More common cases are first time alcohol violations in which “there may be no obvious victims of harm, aside from the individual’s own circumstances. That [response] might typically involve community service, a reflection paper, engagement with a mentor, and probation.”

Codding recognizes that “if [drinking] is what people are doing, and that’s the way to connect, than that’s what many will feel compelled to do. I’m sympathetic to that.”

Students violating a written policy is not his “chief concern,” but rather, “can we make an alternative narrative possible?” He hopes for an alternative narrative at EMU where partying is not necessary for human connection or a full college experience.

“For me,” Codding said, “a better story is people getting to know one another deeply, building significant life-long relationships where they learn to challenge and support one another. Where they have a lot of fun, but they’ve maybe honed their creativity and they don’t feel the need to resort to substances in order to enjoy one another.”

In discussing his overarching vision of EMU, Codding likes “to think in terms of human flourishing:” a divorcing from the dominant narrative of college alcohol use in pursuit of something that is, hopefully, more meaningful, relational, and accountable to community.

-Randi B. Hagi, Co-Editor In Chief

]]>http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/interview-with-eric-codding-an-alternative-narrative/feed/0Discipline Affects Community At Largehttp://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/discipline-affects-community-at-large/
http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/discipline-affects-community-at-large/#commentsThu, 17 Apr 2014 17:56:49 +0000http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/?p=3210Read More ›]]>While I personally have never experienced any disciplinary actions from Res. Life, I also have never felt encouraged, supported, welcomed or felt as though Res. Life encouraged any sort of community. During my three years living on campus, it felt like Res. Life was morally policing my peers and me as we waded through making normal mistakes and having common experiences that most college students have, doling out arbitrary punishments and enforcing only some of the rules some of the time.

For example, while directing my senior project, Time Stands Still, an actor in my play and dear friend Chris Parks (who has given me permission to write about these events), was facing disciplinary action from Res. Life.

This play already had an incredibly short rehearsal process, only five weeks, and there were only four actors in the show. Theater is a very collaborative art; without any one person’s presence, the entire project is in jeopardy. Can you imagine my panic when one of my actors was not allowed to be at rehearsal for an entire week?

After a minor alcohol infraction (an RD discovered empty beer bottles in their suite, where there are three roommates), Chris was suspended for five days and fined $300. Never mind that suspending a student from classes and fining them an obscene amount is an archaic and ineffective way of morally policing students, let’s talk about the punitive aspect of this punishment to Chris. They were never given any options or any voice in this process. There was never the thought of, “hmm, maybe they have nowhere to go if we kick them off campus.” There was most certainly never any thought of who would, by extension and by our communal nature of living, be affected by this.

I want to reiterate that this happened with about two weeks left in the rehearsal process of “Time Stands Still.” This was my senior project, something I had been working on for over a year, something I poured my heart and soul into and was the culmination of my time as theater major. When I learned that five very valuable days in the final period of rehearsal was being robbed from me, I panicked. Where was the restorative justice, where was the place for my voice and the voice of all the other students involved in this production to be heard? An overly harsh prescriptive punishment had been given with no thoughts to the personal student or anyone else in their community.

Me being me, I made my voice heard. I immediately sent an email to Res. Life voicing my concerns for the play, and how its success depended on having Chris as an actor. An email was sent back and I was hushed with what felt like false reassurances that the whole community is always taken into account when infractions happen and punishments are necessary. However, during the waiting period, I lost even more valuable rehearsal time. While the play ended up fine, thanks to many long, extra hours of work put in by everyone involved in the show, it was in real danger during this holding period with Res. Life. There was no restorative aspect, no thought to the community at large, only thoughts of punishing this student who dared to have a few empty beers in his recycling.

I am certainly not suggesting there should be no accountability for infractions, but perhaps Res. Life should rethink what it means to live in a community when sentencing students to harsh punishments. College is a time we all grow, try new things, make mistakes, and continue to learn and grow from them. Is such harsh punishment really the best way to encourage students to learn from their mistakes?

The CLC policy on alcohol is one of the things that I like best about EMU. To understand how important the CLC has been to me, it’s necessary to understand that I hate parties. I don’t drink, I hate the music, I hate dancing, and I hate crowds. All of these things make me generally uncomfortable. As a first-year, I was so uncomfortable around all of these activities that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make friends.

I knew that there would be people on campus who felt the same way that I did about party life, but the idea of finding friends whose only similarity with me was that they didn’t party felt unattractive. Just as somebody who likes to go out doesn’t want to be defined by that one facet of their lives, I did not want to be defined by what I did not do.

Luckily, I made friends that I had more in common with than what we abstained from. I believe the CLC was a huge part of this. For me, the set of campus rules provided a safe place to meet people in an atmosphere that I was comfortable with. I made friends who liked drinking and dancing and crowds, but I didn’t have to pretend to like these things to connect with them. The CLC created a safe space for me where I could socialize with people and still be myself.

Furthermore, I think that the policy on alcohol makes perfect sense. The actual restrictions imposed upon students are that they do not do things that are already illegal (drink when underage or supply alcohol to minors), and do not drink while on EMU’s property. To me, these restrictions seem incredibly reasonable and should be easy to follow.

I realize that people have had bad experiences with the CLC and that they think they have been treated unfairly. I know that others think there are issues with the way restorative justice is implemented as part of the disciplinary process.

I don’t want to invalidate these experiences, but my experience with the CLC has been positive. In fact, I believe it has been an essential part of my four positive years at EMU and feel comfortable with myself the whole time. What’s more, I know that I am not the only one who feels this way. I have heard students talk about the alcohol rules like they make no sense, but my experience with these rules has led me to believe the opposite. I like the policy the way it is now. I think that it would be a shame to see them change.

-David Yoder, Co-Editor In Chief

Our alcohol policy conflicts me. I have seen the “dark sides” of alcohol: family and friends consumed by dependency and night after night of belligerence or stupidity. I saw these depths well before coming to college, which instilled in me a much more aware and self-preserving approach to alcohol use than many students who enter EMU with no exposure to substances other than fearful prohibition. Where some first-years see a forbidden fruit, I see a feral animal that, if handled cautiously, can be extremely fun to play with.

Hence my conflict about the alcohol policy. I would be put off by a dorm like many at West Virginia University, which I considered attending, where I might have to climb over passed out, puke-covered hallmates in an attempt to reach my room. However, I am well aware of my own limits, know how to take care of myself and others, and have had a gamut of good experiences drinking responsibly with friends. I don’t want those experiences to be demonized. Thus, I think that the policy is overly stringent against those who drink legally and responsibly, even on campus.

I recognize that some students cannot handle alcohol. I also recognize that having a prohibitive policy in place does not effectively deter dangerous behavior. Students are drinking, students are becoming intoxicated, and students are hurting themselves and others by drinking, in part because of a nominally abstinent campus’s refusal to discuss the realities of alcohol use. Silence and abstinence do not achieve what they strive for. But is there an alternative to silence and abstinence, without resorting to the puke-covered hallmate? One thing I can support is, like Amanda Chandler has suggested in this issue, that discipline should target destructive behavior, and not possession or controlled cases of hosting.

How is an institution to respond to the infinite manners of alcohol use with the nuance that constructive responses require? How, also, can we promote an environment in which not drinking is equally as acceptable as drinking? I posit that, to begin doing so, there should not be a policy that pun- ishes those who drink responsibly, and remove the paradox of punishment for victimless crimes. We should have reasonable restrictions on alcohol use, encouragement towards those who abstain from alcohol, and the cognizance to openly discuss health with those who violate restrictions.

-Randi B. Hagi, Co-Editor In Chief

]]>http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/dual-editorials-on-the-community-lifestyle-commitment/feed/0Altercations with Residence Life a Matter of Ideologyhttp://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/altercations-with-residence-life-a-matter-of-ideology/
http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/2014/04/17/altercations-with-residence-life-a-matter-of-ideology/#commentsThu, 17 Apr 2014 17:48:07 +0000http://emu.edu/now/weathervane/?p=3206Read More ›]]>

I have been involved in many institutions and have experience in so many different kinds of situations, and yet it is hard for me to understand the things that make up the EMU Res. Life mentality. As a philosophy/theology major and a former analyst, I have spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to understand the deep structuRes. that make up the EMU landscape; I have also been one of the most vocal Res. Life critics, and have spent much of the last two years trying to pinpoint my criticism without being mean. I have had to bear witness to many friends dealing with Res. Life. It would take many hours to recount all these experiences.

Attributional Thinking

One of my main problems with the Res.. Life attitude is that it engages to a large degree in “attributional thinking.” This is a fancy term for the confusion of behavior with personality. There are many arguments regarding Res. Life, but they all boil down to the same root issue: an inescapable problem of worldview in which judgment and authority become the major criterion of social awareness.

Rather than engage in the hard work of character-building with students in a way that doesn’t cause alienation, Res. Life uses rules and regulations. These rules serve to stand both in loco parentis – that is, in place of good parenting, which is still somewhat necessary in the college setting – and in loco iudiciam – in place of better judgment, which is not something that is one-size-fits-all.

Res. Life Ideology

Talking with Res. Life authorities, one hears much of the evangelical party line, albeit in terminology that is softened. As someone who has spent a lot of time talking to Eric Codding, my sense of his learning and opinions is that deep down, he is a very conservative person who has appropriated the language and some of the methodology of the liberal arts.

Eric and I have our major ideological differences, and I want to Res.pect him as a person. But I honestly think that many of the changes Res. Life is seeking to effect in the EMU culture are, at heart, ideological.

My deep conviction is that, if the university culture is going to change, it shouldn’t be an issue of enforcement, or a top-down process. Unfortunately at times it seems that the Student Life philosophy does not allow consideration of a bottom-up approach to issues like sobriety.

Effects of Prohibition

Another problem with Res. Life’s philosophy is that it ignoRes. its own affect: as Aaron Wile and Peter Rollins pointed out last year, the prohibition often creates the desire to break the prohibition. Former student Aaron Wile used the example of alcohol in a letter to the editor, explaining how treating drinking as a taboo actually creates serious behavioral problems at EMU.

I feel as if, instead of examining their own behaviors, student life authorities tried to psychoanalyze the problem onto me. This seems, unfortunately, to be an experience mirrored by some of my friends in their dealings with Res. Life.

Purity Ethic and Punishment

Perhaps the biggest problem with Res. Life is that it functions through a purity ethic that is by no means shared culturally. In fact, everything I have learned in my theology and bible and religion classes is against this way of non-relational negative identity. Everything I know about Jesus informs me that being a Christian is not about being exclusivist, but about forgiveness, Res.toration and the embrace of difference.

The problem I have with Res. Life’s mechanistic implementation of punitive justice is not that it is mechanistic so much as that it is punitive, and that it pretends to be based on Biblical ethics. Instead of “circumcising our hearts” when it comes to goofy teenaged behaviors, Res. Life focuses on “washing the outside of the cup” and further marginalizes anyone who doesn’t already fit in. The kind of philosophy practiced by Res. Life blocks people and institutions from self-actualizing; aspirational purity spawns a dearth of real moral discernment. Being dependent on ideologies Res.ults in a lack of moral imagination.

Instead of helping God discern what it means to be righteous, like Abraham does, we merely parrot some arbitrary lines from scripture like the Pharisees. Because Res. Life lacks the moral imagination necessary to see beyond the perception of insecurity that comes with real moral discernment, it cannot help but see the efforts of student leaders as a threat, and it begins to desire the repression of desire as a means to its aspirations.

Relationship, not Legalism

I could go on and on with specific examples, and am happy to engage in conversation with anyone on these topics. But here, for the sake of brevity, I will end with another philosophical point. Everyone knows that the speed limit is both arbitrary and existentially flexible. You only get pulled over for two reasons: you’re being egregiously reckless, or the cops have an alternative motive for their actions, like racism or boredom.

The law itself is not an absolute stricture of the ontological process of driving, and even if it were physically impossible to go 26 in a Res.idential zone, it wouldn’t be categorically wrong. We cannot treat the law, the CLC or any other document as an absolute. To do so is idolatry. Let’s stop with the idolatry and allow our hearts to turn to God. Because unlike Res. Life, God actually trusts that deep down you want to do the right thing.

If indeed EMU wants to survive the next one hundred years, it is going to have to face the music.

The lifestyle aspirations which we talk about were meant to serve the students, not vice versa. If EMU is going to survive, going to thrive, it is going to need to do some deep soul-searching, and it is going to have to reject the pharisaical purity ethic, the obsession- compulsion of reckless authority, and it’s going to have to embrace the foundational Anabaptist principles of community discernment and deep relationship. Blessed are they who thirst for wholeness – they will be filled, and those who obsess over meaningless identity-markers and engage in attributional thinking will go away empty.